


El Tango De Kurt Hummel

by blasthisass



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blasthisass/pseuds/blasthisass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The much anticipated Wemma wedding has finally arrived, bringing old and new members of the New Directions back together again. But when Kurt recieves an unexpected visitor, Kurt and Blaine experience a dramatic shift in their relationship and the Moulin Rouge theme of the wedding suddenly becomes all too literal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	El Tango De Kurt Hummel

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is my greatest pleasure to introduce, for the very first time, Mr. and Mrs. William Schuester."  
  
Blaine smiled at the applause that erupted through the reception hall as Mr. Schuester and Ms. Pillsbury—Mrs. Schuester now, though Blaine wasn't sure he could ever get used to the phenomenon—swept into it. She blushed a damask rose that beautifully became her pale complexion as Will showed her off on his arm to the whole room and the Puckerman brothers wolf-whistled loudly from their table. 

  
Blaine's gaze moved away from them and to Kurt where he was sitting at another table. Majestic Kurt, stunning in his designer suit, his hair darker but glowing a rich array of colors under the lights of the banquet hall. Kurt, whose hands were coming together to clap out of what well could have been out of politeness more than anything else if not for the radiant expression of joy on his face. Kurt, with Rachel on one side and an empty chair on the other.  
  
 _"I'm sorry you're not going to get to meet him," Kurt had apologized to him and his father simultaneously in the church before the wedding as he leaned against the back of a pew, his weight balanced against his wide-spread arms, his pale fingers splayed against the dark wood like piano keys. "Last minute thing at NYADA that they absolutely would not let him get out of unless it was 'truly a family emergency.'"  
  
Blaine had found himself mesmerized by Kurt's hands as he shifted his weight off them, fingers crooking into air quotes as he spoke.  
  
"I'm sorry he bailed on you," he'd murmured into Kurt's ear as Tina grabbed his arm to pull him away. They'd wanted to start the ceremony, after all.  
  
Kurt had given him a curious look, no longer the guarded one that forever had chilled Blaine to the bone, but simply . . . curious.  
  
"Don't be."_  
  
"All right, all right guys settle down!" Blaine yelled from his place on the stage, waving his hands to get the noise to quiet down. "Oi! Shut up or we'll never get to the cake!"  
  
"Yeah, _quiet_!" Finn yelled suddenly and the cheering turned into a rumble of laughter before dying out.  
  
"Always knew I could count on Finn Hudson to take charge when there's food involved," Blaine joked and smirked when Finn gave him an indignant look and Kurt's soft chuckle was more pronounced to him than any of the others that joined him. "Anyway, I'm not going to stall the moment any longer myself with a long speech, Lord knows we'll have plenty of those later on. Mr. Schue." He lifted his champagne flute in the direction of the man in question. " _Mrs.I_ Schue." He did the same toward Emma, who beamed at him. "Congratulations and all the best to you. And for your first dance as man and wife, I give only this cheesey introduction: my gift is my song. And this one's for you."  
  
He rolled his eyes as Puck and Artie made exaggerated noises of exasperation at him over the opening chords of the song. He finished off the drink he'd been given for a toast he realized he'd never really uttered and wrapped his fingers around the cool metal of the microphone stand, as though he wished to cradle it like a lover. He let the music fill him, let the memory of countless rehearsals seep into his sinews, the meaning of the words as real as the air he breathed in. Air that smelled ever so lightly of perfume and food waiting to be served. And happiness. If happiness has a scent.  
  
Perhaps it did. Blaine knew the scent of happiness in the aroma of boy, of thick, heated air, of expensive facial products that claimed to be scent-free but whose aroma clung to _him_ , came to define him.  
  
Blaine refused to look in his direction as he sang. He couldn't. Not now, when the walls had finally started to fall away again.  
  
 _It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside  
I'm not one of those that can easily hide  
I don't have much money, but, boy if I did  
I'd buy a big house where we both could live_  
  
As Mr. Schue moved across the dance floor with his bride, Blaine didn't find his mind drifting to the stories told at the bachelor party, about when Ms. Pillsbury and Mr. Schue had danced around a bridal shop when she was engaged to Ken Tanaka; not to all the stories Kurt had always told him about the dream wedding between Burt and Carole.  
  
He found it drifting to a high school gymnasium, 70s music playing in the background, arms wrapped around a tall boy with a kilt and a gold crown perched majestically amongst his chestnut locks. When all eyes had been on him, some in contempt and distaste and he'd known nothing but the boy in his arms, the face tucked into the crook of his neck and the love he still hadn't quite understood the full extent of.  
  
He sang softly through the first verse and the chorus, pushing thoughts away until he couldn't any longer and his gaze drifted away from the bride and groom to Kurt.  
  
Always Kurt, not matter how hard he tried to stop it.  
  
 _If I was a sculptor, but then again, no  
Or a man who makes potions in a traveling show  
I know it's not much, but it's the best I can do_  
  
He almost lost his breath as the glittering myriad of colors that made up Kurt's eyes met his own and the latter smiled softly, his features riddled with ancient affection.  
  
 _I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss  
Well, a few of the verses, well, they've got me quite cross  
But the sun's been quite kind while I wrote this song  
It's for people like you that keep it turned on_  
  
In Kurt's gaze, he could see eternity again. Kurt looked startled momentarily, like Blaine had caught him in a moment he'd never expected to have, his attention pulled from whatever Rachel was whispering in his ear. Even in the glare of the stage lights, Blaine could see him with perfect clarity. Could see the exact hue of the blush that spread over his high cheekbones at being caught without his mask on. Could see the quickened rise and fall of his chest under the pristinely ironed suit. Could see memory and emotion and logic battling it out in his eyes. Could see ghosts of the boy who he'd serenaded with Teenage Dream, the first time. Somewhere Only We Know, when they were afraid of losing each other after just being found. It's Time, when they thought they were stronger than they were. Teenage Dream, the second time, when Kurt's enamored expression had slipped away for what Blaine had thought for sure would be forever.  
  
He'd been certain of it, but there it was in front of him. Kurt, his Kurt, the one that loved him unfailingly, back from the dead. And it filled it with such emotion that he had to look away, if only to keep himself sane.  
  
 _So, excuse me forgetting, but these things I do  
You see I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue  
Anyway, the thing is is, what I really mean  
Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen_  
  
He smiled because it was real again, it had to be.  
  
 _And you can tell everybody, this is your song  
It may be quite simple but now that it's done  
I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind that I put down in words_  
  
When he looked up again, to meet those eyes that the song, his song, not Will and Emma's, was about, he found them gone.  
  
In their place over Kurt's face were hands, beautiful but unfamiliar, lingering until Kurt's hands curled around their wrists to pull them away.  
  
Kurt's eyes were bright then, glistening with surprise and they didn't linger on Blaine. They rose instantly to the man behind him and with a muffled shout he leapt out of his chair, his arms flying up to wrap around his neck, fingers curling in blonde hair and face disappearing into a broad shoulder.  
  
The tight, physical contact that had been _Blaine's_ and now apparently had passed over to _him. Adam._  
  
Blaine thought he'd fall over, like the floor had been jerked out from under him and he clung to the microphone stand as though it would keep him from hitting the ground hard, would keep that darkness from clawing its way back out of his chest and devouring him whole.  
  
He couldn't remember if he even finished the song but, judging from the look on Rachel's face, he hadn't.  
  
 _How wonderful life is while you're in the world_

* * *

  
  
"I can't believe you didn't call me to tell me you were going to make it," Kurt admonished in mock annoyance, leaning his shoulder against Adam's as he murmured into his ear as the reception moved forward. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Blaine recovering from a fumble that he somehow missed and making his way back to his seat. But Kurt didn't— _couldn't_ —allow himself to focus on it. So instead he leaned closer to Adam, his warm fingers wrapped around Adam's weather-cooled ones, the air around him alive with the aroma of Adam's cologne.  
  
Adam snorted. "And here I was hoping your reaction would be more along the lines of, 'Oh, Adam, apple of my eye, I can't believe you made it after all! I'm overjoyed!'"  
  
"Is that where the name 'Adam and the Apples' is supposed to come from?" Kurt teased instead of indulging him and was rewarded by a rumble of laughter.  
  
"Sorry, that's a secret of Biblical proportions. Maybe I'll let you know tonight. . . . If we're breaking one rule of the Bible, might as well go crazy and break them all, eh?" Adam replied smoothly, turning his head to wink at Kurt.  
  
"You're an idiot."  
  
"But you love me anyway."  
  
Kurt stumbled awkwardly over his reply, his words of, "Well, I have the unfortunate tendency of falling for idiots so I guess I must," hanging on the air before him, ready to be uttered but the joke somehow failing him. He cleared his throat awkwardly and instead leave close as he murmured, "I don't know, if you meet Dad and Carole and Finn and Blaine and they don't approve of you I might have to send you packing."  
  
He didn't realize the slip he'd made until Adam was pondering his answer quietly. "Ah, I get to finally meet the infamous Blaine, do I?" Adam teased, his voice light but suddenly his hand gripped Kurt's a little too tightly. The motion vanished before Kurt could fully register it and he was almost certain he'd imagined it.  
  
"You're going to love him, trust me."  
  
"I can only hope to love your friends half as much as you."  
  
"Careful now, I don't want to have to get jealous," Kurt teased again before he could stop himself, before it registered completely how the only non-family member he'd listed that Adam simply had to meet was Blaine. How he'd implied that his ex-boyfriend's opinion of his current boyfriend was somehow important. How Kurt getting jealous over Adam liking Blaine too much could only mean he himself was still in that limbo of liking Blaine far too much.  
  
And then there had been that rush of adrenaline during the first dance. That brief instant when Kurt had looked at Blaine and everything had fallen away and he'd allowed himself to be bowled over by the emotion in Blaine's eyes as he sang to him.  
  
It was a moment that Kurt desperately tried to shove aside but it kept creeping back with the feeling that the hand in his wasn't fitting quite right or the thought that the warm breath whispering in his ear didn't send shivers down his spine.  
  
"You haven't had a drink yet, right?" He mumbled quickly, tugging Adam to his feet and avoiding all eye contact with any of the other tables. "C'mon, there's an open bar that we're going to give Mr. Schue shit for having after the fiascos of junior year."  
  
But running, it would seem, wasn't an entirely effective coping strategy in Kurt's life and, it seemed, more often than not a better manner of running into Blaine than away from him.  
  
Because of course the fact that Kurt hadn't been paying attention to Blaine and his whereabouts meant that he had to practically run smack into him at the bar.  
  
"Blaine," he squeaked as he stumbled back a pace in surprised at his own failed escape. He heard Adam grunt slightly behind him as their bodies collided with Kurt's retreat and in an effort to recover his impeccable charm and grace he barreled forward toward the promised introduction and tried not to read the emotions that were painted plain as day across Blaine's handsome face. "Blaine, this is Adam, my boyfriend—" the label was thrown out more for his own sake than out of necessity "—Adam, this is—"  
  
"Blaine, it's a pleasure to finally meet you," Adam interjected smoothly. His arms had automatically wound around Kurt when the boy had stumbled back against him (eliciting a soft, strangled noise from Blaine that had quickly been hidden in the glass of amber liquid he'd procured). He unwound one of those arms now to extend a hand to Blaine with a friendly grin. "I've heard a lot about you from Rachel and Kurt. Seriously, between the two of them, there's hardly a moment without you."  
  
Kurt swallowed, unsure of how to take that statement and he ducked his head to avoid the look he could feel Blaine giving him.  
  
"Likewise," Blaine managed with the perfect mask of his breeding in place. "And I about you," he continued even though Kurt had told him next to nothing and he doubted Blaine would have wanted to hear more even had Rachel been constantly running to tell him.  
  
Kurt felt a twinge of apprehension stirring in his gut as Blaine finished off his drink and tapped the bar for another one. The formal introduction finished, the air between them thickened with silence even as the music from the band grew louder.  
  
"Kurt told me you're planning on auditioning for NYADA?" Adam asked finally, placing a soft kiss to Kurt's temple that felt almost like a branding, a mark of where they stood, before he moved out from behind Kurt to stand next to Blaine at the bar.  
  
"I was considering it," Blaine replied stiffly, swirling his drink and Kurt was struck with the sudden urge to rip it out of his hands and fling it across the room, yelling about all the horrible shit that always happened when Blaine was drunk and how he couldn't let him ruin yet another thing that should be—no, that _was_ —good.  
  
"Was?"  
  
"Yeah ... Recently I'm not sure if it's the place for me."  
  
"You should apply, kid, you'd be a shoe-in. I came in during that number of yours and despite that slip-up at the very end, you were phenomenal. Nailed all the emotions perfectly, it was fucking incredible to watch."  
  
"I just sing what I feel," Blaine muttered into his glass through the praise, his gaze shifting subtly to Kurt.  
  
Adam grinned at him, awkwardness displaced in favor of talking about his school and performance. "All the more reason. That's exactly what they're looking for. I'm telling you, go through the application process, I'll put in a good word with Carmen for you, though I'm sure you won't need it."  
  
"Thanks but I don't think I'm interested anymore," Blaine muttered again, his shoulders stiff and fingers clenched so tightly around the crystal of his glass that Kurt grew fearful that it'd shatter under the force.  
  
And he didn't stop to pinpoint why Blaine's sudden dismissal of the school weighed so heavily on his heart. "But New York's all you've talked about for close to three years, Blaine."  
  
It was then that Blaine finally looked directly at Kurt, their eyes meeting for the first time since Blaine had been singing the wedding party's first song and Kurt suddenly felt winded, tipsy like the world had suddenly reversed its spin on him.  
  
"I guess," Blaine started finally, holding Kurt's gaze as though he wished to render Adam irrelevant, as though it didn't matter to him whether Adam heard what he had to say, "What I wanted in New York doesn't matter anymore. I guess there's not point in chasing a dream that you lost and you're not going to get back, is there?"  
  
Kurt inhaled sharply, his breath catching in his throat and threatening to choke him. He didn't know what to say, whether he should yell at Blaine for screwing everything up or because he shouldn't talk like that when Kurt was finally moving on or whether he should push Blaine against the bar and prove to him just how wrong his words are.  
  
He blinked. No, _no_ , that wasn't going to happen.  
  
"Umm, okay—" Adam started and his voice jarred Kurt out of the dangerous spiral of his thoughts.  
  
"I love this song," he interrupted, flashing a seductive grin at Adam and ignoring the way Blaine half recoiled, half attempted to maintain his composure. "You were saying earlier how you wanted to show me off on the dance floor?"  
  
Adam raised an eyebrow. "They're playing Tango de Roxanne at a _wedding_ and you want to dance to it?"  
  
"Hmm, I truly love to tango," Kurt replied simply, reaching past Blaine to grab Adam's hand and pull him toward the dance floor, leaving Blaine to collapse wearily against the bar and gave a weak nod when Adam called over his shoulder about how good it was to finally meet him.

* * *

  
  
He had no reasons but one to hate him and anyone would have told him that he'd thrown away the right to use that one reason. He really shouldn't have hated him. Adam was all charm and grace and politeness and apparently had the perfect talent of barreling through what should have been awkward situations.  
  
But standing at the bar and watching Adam with his hand splayed low across the curve of Kurt's lower back, holding Kurt as close as humanly possible while skillfully maneuvering the dance floor, Blaine couldn't think of a single person he'd ever despised more.  
  
He swallowed the bitter was in his mouth as Adam's gaze grew heated as he stared directly into Kurt's eyes, their gazes locked, observant of nothing but each other as they moved seamlessly. His hand on Kurt's lower back did nothing but ignite a fire in the pit of Blaine's stomach as they moved.  
He hated him. Adam. With his cocksure little smirk and his fluid, seductive dance and Kurt's chest pressed flush against his.  
  
 _His eyes upon your face_  
  
Cool blue eyes roaming Kurt's face, crawling over the smooth line of his neck as he dipped him backward, Kurt's whole, lithe body one long arc of smooth, sharp lines and toned muscle.  
  
 _His hand upon your hand_  
  
Strong fingers intertwined with long, pale ones, leading across the dance floor. Kurt's right ring finger painstakingly empty without that little bowtie ring. That hand splayed across Kurt's lower back, pressing the cloth of his dark dress shirt into his perspiring skin, as though that would allow it to vanish all together  
  
 _His lips caress your skin_  
  
Bodies pulled so close together it twisted Blaine's stomach to the point of nausea. His lips against the skin below Kurt's ear when he pulled him up from the dip.  
  
It's Blaine's spot. The one he found, the one that made Kurt fall apart.  
  
 _It's more than I can stand!_  
  
He didn't realize he'd slammed the empty glass on the bar so hard a crack ran up the side of it until a warm hand wrapped around his wrist, pinning it to the sleek, polished wood of the bar.  
  
"Blaine, what are you doing?"  
  
It was when Sam spoke, his voice low near Blaine's ear, that he realized the hue of red he'd been seeing the world in. The fog that had enveloped all his thought but the one of Kurt and Adam and their dance and how easily it could take a turn to something completely different.  
  
"Leave it alone, Sam," he muttered angrily, trying to pull his arm away but Sam was stronger than him and he held him in place, his gaze concerned and piercing.  
  
His eyes weren't the only pair he could feel boring into him but he doesn't look. Can't look.  
  
The tango still played in the background.  
  
"Don't do this to yourself, man."  
  
"I said leave it alone," and suddenly his voice is raised without him meaning to.  
  
"Blaine, it's not worth it."  
  
"He's worth—"  
"I _know_ , Blaine. But you can't do this to yourself. Not here, not now. Just walk away. Cool down."  
  
He looked at Sam then. Curious Sam with his eyes opened in earnest and his head tilted in concern. He'd always thought Sam a little slow, a little dim (never in a bad way, no. It was just his nature) but Sam constantly seemed to have those moments of profundity where he understood people with the utmost clarity and Blaine felt himself deflating under his sympathetic scrutiny.  
  
 _Why does my heart cry?_  
  
"I don't know if I can do this, Sam."  
"Then walk away. Get some air."  
  
Blaine exhaled a breath that he hadn't been aware he'd been holding and slowly turned his gaze away from Sam. Kurt stared back at him, eyes wide and mouth open, entire countenance stricken. He didn't look at Blaine, not really, but the glass that had been slammed hard against the bar, still held in Blaine's white-knuckled grip.  
  
 _Feelings I can't fight_  
  
He couldn't do it. Couldn't stand by and watch the masquerade that in another universe would have been his life. Adam's arms were still wrapped around Kurt's waist, his gaze flashing to the spectacle caused by Blaine at the bar before he leaned in and murmured something into Kurt's ear.  
  
Kurt's eyes narrowed and Blaine felt all his anger and betrayal welling up inside again and, with more strength than he realize he possessed, he wrenched his arm from Sam's loosened grasp and stalked away, his head bowed and his pace rapid.  
  
He'd be damned if he let Adam see him cry.  
  
 _You're free to leave me,  
But just don't deceive me  
And please, believe me when I say_  
  
"I love you." He whispered it like a secret because that's what it'd become. That was all it could ever be.  
  
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"  
  
His voice sounded behind Blaine as he crossed the front lobby of the banquet hall, but he didn't turn around. He merely squeezed his eyes shut to keep the heated liquid of his tears inside and plowed forward.  
  
Running, always running. Just when he thought he'd stopped.  
  
"You don't get to do this, Blaine!" Kurt yelled after him, his footfalls loud even on the plush carpet and the desperate anger on his voice reverberating all around Blaine, piercing him from all sides. He kept walking. "You don't! You have no right to act like a jealous asshole because I'm moving on and I'm happy again and you don't get to ruin that! You lost that right when you jumped into bed with some idiot first chance you got—"  
  
"Then just let me walk away, Kurt!" Blaine yelled over his shoulder and cursed his voice as it wavered dangerously.  
  
"—and then had the nerve to tell me it was _my_ fault!"  
Blaine froze mid-step at that, his breath catching on the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat and he whirled around. Running away be damned.  
  
"Excuse me?" he spat out and Kurt fell back a step and stilled completely, as though he'd never expected Blaine to actually stop. "Say what you want about me because I fucked up but don't you dare tell me that I ever pinned _my_ mistake on _you_."  
  
Kurt blinked, his entire presence frozen as he stared a Blaine, his eyes wide, but the moment lasted milliseconds before that awful wall was back up. That wall that had begrudging allowed them to rebuild their friendship but had never allowed them to go back, to fix the root of the problem.  
  
"Oh, please! You think I don't remember? You think I didn't run the words you threw at me a Battery Park over and over in my head! I didn't sleep for days!" Words tumbled out of him, running together like water being poured over a painting that hasn't dried, smearing the colors. "How all I could think was how you were telling me it was my fault that you decided you had to stick your dick up another guy’s ass! How it was all because of me, because I left you and you were _lonely_ —"  
  
"I never said it was your fault!"  
  
"I could quote the fucking conversation back to you, Blaine Anderson, with all the times I ran over it in my head on another countless, sleepless night!"  
  
When Kurt paused to heave for breath, Blaine exhaled softly, letting the shout waiting on the tip of his tongue fall to the ground with barely more noise than would have been emitted from a single raindrop. He didn't speak and it was that fact that seemed to still Kurt as well.  
  
"I _was_ lonely," he said finally and Kurt inhaled sharply, his eyes flashing with the pain and heartbreak and betrayal of months, all mixed together with the angry gall at the words he thought he was hearing from Blaine. "I _did_ need you." Kurt scoffed and shook his head but didn't say anything. "I did need you and you weren't there. You were New York, doing exactly what I told you you'd be doing when you took us in for counseling in Ms. Pillsbury's office."  
  
"I can't believe I'm hearing this right now—"  
  
"It's amazing you're hearing anything at all since you've apparently been rendered incapable of hearing anything I have to say since you went to that stupid city," Blaine snapped suddenly and Kurt's voice, his most prized possession, failed him mid sentence.  
  
Blaine took a deep breath, shaking his head in resignation at the hideously patterned carpet of the banquet hall foyer before looking up an staring Kurt straight in the eye. "I'm not going to stand here and coddle you and tell you those things I said to you weren't true because they were true. And God knows you don't need anyone to coddle you. But I'm also not going to stand silently by while you make yourself the bad guy here. Because all that stuff about me feeling like you'd moved on to better things and I no longer had a place in your life? All true. But no one is going to claim responsibility for _my_ actions but _me_."  
  
Kurt didn't say a word, simply stared at him with an unreadable expression, hidden far behind his mask as Blaine continued, words that had been suppressed for months flowing out through a finally-broken dam. "It's all me, because that's the guy that I've always always been, long before I met you. I was the guy who ran away and as much as I tried to escape that guy, as much as I stopped being that guy so that I could be the guy you needed me to be, he still clung to me, dragging me down when I tried to fly. But for a year I could stop being him. For a year I let myself be the guy I always wanted to be and I did it because I had you, because you needed me. But then you left. You moved on to this amazing new life and you didn't need me anymore. And for the first time in a year I was faced with that guy, the one I'd avoided since I met you and what did I do? I ran. I tried running away from the feeling that maybe I hadn't found my soulmate after all only to run smack into the realization that I had and that I'd simultaneously lost him, probably forever."

* * *

  
  
"I..." Kurt breathed out in one shaky breath as Blaine's words barreled through him, collided with his body with enough force to send him flying but instead flew through him to collide with his soul. He didn't know what to say, didn't know what to think, Blaine's own self-hatred something he'd never seen before. It mingled dangerously with every doubt he'd ever had, every little detail that reminded him of Blaine until his heart ached.  
  
For the first time in his life, he found himself wishing he had a drink at hand.  
  
Blaine paused, like he was waiting for Kurt to say something, anything but Kurt couldn't think, let alone speak. When his silence was rewarded with only silence, Blaine's face collapsed into the most sorrowful expression that Kurt had ever seen, like he was crushed by the rejection and the simultaneous idea that he'd had the gall to expect anything different.  
  
"Because I realized it then. As soon as I did it every doubt in my mind vanished and was replaced with the crippling realization of just how badly I'd fucked up."  
  
Kurt wanted to tell him to stop, wanted to run back into the banquet hall, back to the life he should be perfectly happy with but he felt suddenly like he was falling, like gravity had the greater hold on him.  
  
All he wanted at that moment was to keep Blaine from being quite so terribly sad.  
  
"Blaine—"  
  
"And I'm sorry, Kurt," Blaine continued, his voice breaking like all the sorrow of the world were riding on his shoulders. "Because I've tried to do good by you. You're my best friend and I want to do good by you, but I can't do this. I told myself I'd stop running, but I physically cannot find the strength to stand and watch the only guy I could ever picture myself spending the rest of my life with falling in love with someone else. I'm," his voice cracks and its like a gunshot to Kurt's heart, "I'm so, so sorry."  
  
It was when he gave Kurt a watery smile, weak and hopeless and turned his back on Kurt to walk away from him that it truly hit him. That he had never in his life had to watch Blaine walk away from him. It had always been him; when Blaine had told him in Battery Park, It had been Kurt that walked away heartbroken. When he'd gone to see Grease, he'd been the one to walk sets in the hopes that it would abate his heartache, leaving Blaine standing alone in an empty hallway.  
  
But to watch Blaine give up, to watch him walk away was jarring in a way that Kurt had never anticipated. It was only then that he realized just how much he couldn't stand to see Blaine leave him.  
  
How much he just wanted Blaine, how even when everything in his life seemed perfect, it couldn't be so without the boy that was at that very moment finally making the choice to walk away.  
  
"You know what my immediate thought was when I heard that Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury's wedding theme was _Moulin Rouge_?" he called after Blaine, willing him to stop. To stay. He tilted his head toward the banquet hall and the strands of music just barely audible within. "I thought about how, in another universe, you and I would be the ones performing this song."  
  
He didn't know what it was that made Blaine paused at that, whether it was his own heart or simple musical curiosity but he did pause, his head tilting to first register the opening melody of _Come What May_.  
  
His pause emboldened Kurt and he broke the distance, taking the smallest step forward and giving in to the now perfectly obvious pull of his heart. "I remembered the first time you and I watched the movie together and you declared it to be our song. We weren't even dating then." Kurt paused before venturing to add, "I'm a little surprised you're not singing it."  
  
He couldn't see the expression on Blaine's face, but he saw the resigned drop of his shoulders as he shook his head and murmured, "Finn wanted me to sing it with Marley, glee club leads and everything, but I turned him down."  
  
"How come?"  
  
He swallowed hard, something fluttering reawakening in his stomach when Blaine turned to look at him, his eyes dry but clouded with helpless sadness. "Please don't pretend like you can't figure out why," he whispered, eyes wide and the amber in them glistening and he turned away again.  
  
He'd barely made it half a step before Kurt spoke again, voice shaking but powered with determination. "Sing it with me now, then."  
  
"Kurt, don't—"  
  
"I won't run if you won't run."  
  
Kurt held his breath. He stood waiting for what seemed like an eternity, his heart pounding in his chest like the rapid fire of a snare drum, pounding in his ears as he fought both the pull to run forward and the doubt that tried to pull him away.  
  
Blaine's gaze was scrutinizing when he looked back again, narrow and curious in an attempt to squash down any of the false hope growing within him. "Why?"  
  
Kurt swallowed. "Because we both thought we were meant to."  
  
"Kurt, why—"  
  
"Please."  
  
He stood and waited. It was all he could do sometimes when it came to Blaine. It was peculiar this time, though, because he wasn't waiting for Blaine to finally realize his feelings and make the first move. He was waiting for Blaine to realize that he was trying to make the first move himself.  
  
He watched and waited as Blaine's countenance softened ever so slightly, a change that could hardly be seen by anyone who didn't know him inside and out the way that Kurt did and when Blaine cocked his head slowly to better hear the music in the reception hall, Kurt knew.  
  
He knew without a doubt that he wanted to fix them and that they _could_ fix them.  
  
 _Listen to my heart, can you hear it sing  
Telling me to give you everything  
Seasons may change, winter to spring  
But I love you until the end of time  
  
Come what may, come what may  
I will love you until my dying day_  
  
He sang softly, more so than Kurt had ever really heard him sing and his voice was laced with caution, as though he were utterly determined to stop making things up in his head. Kurt felt his breath hitch as Blaine's did, stumbling over the _I love you_ 's as though to sing them to Kurt had infinitely more meaning than to simply say them.  
  
He took a step forward, opening his mouth to sing and Blaine blinked in surprise. When his eyes opened, some of the wariness had been replaced by hints of stunned disbelief.  
  
 _Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place  
Suddenly it moves with such a perfect grace_  
  
When Blaine joined into the verse, Kurt was almost unable to keep going, not with the sudden strength and emotion in Blaine’s voice, which shocked Kurt with the realization that it had been subdued, absent when he’d sung before. Not with the way their voices blended together in a way that Kurt had almost forgotten.  
  
 _Suddenly my life doesn’t seem such a waste  
  
“It all revolves around you,_ ” he sang alone, moving still closer as Blaine’s voice dropped away and he looked both warily optimistic and almost thankful that he could stop singing before his voice failed him.  
  
He’d forgotten what it felt like, singing with Blaine. How easy it was, how perfectly well they anticipated each other. It was a startling contrast to the past several months, to the half-spontaneous little duets sung with Adam around his apartment, they way they’d move together but not quite seamlessly, adapting to the awkward space between them rather than dancing around one another as though each little movement was anticipated, choreographed to the minute. It was rough around the edges but duetting with Blaine was movement with someone who knew him as well as he knew himself, each step countered perfectly, each note sung blending their voices together until it was difficult to determine where one ended and the other began, much like the tight heat of the press of their bodies, the constant, inevitable finale to any duet.  
  
Each little step closer, each cautious circling and each note sung served only to remind Kurt just how much he’d missed it, had him yearning for the song to be over so that they could reach the inevitable finale.  
  
For it was inevitable, he knew it and he was finally rushing back toward it rather than fighting it.  
  
 _And there’s no mountain too high, no river too wide  
Sing out this song and I’ll be there by your side  
Storm clouds may gather and stars may collide_  
  
He was in front of Blaine then and pressed a cool finger to Blaine’s lips before he could start singing again. Blaine’s eyes widened comically, his inhale quick and sharp through his nose, his eyes a dark amber, deep and fathomless, hopeful and confused.  
  
He finished the song alone because it was better that way. Because he needed to be the one to sing it.  
  
 _But I love you until the end of time.  
Come what may, come what may  
I will love you until my dying day  
Oh, come what may. Come what may_  
  
“I will love you,” he whispered and he couldn’t keep his heart from pounding painfully, his feet heavy on the carpet, his balance thrown, threatening to sway him toward the boy whose lips had parted and whose tongue had unconsciously peeked out from between them.  
  
“Kurt,” Blaine whispered and he sounded strangled, parched in need of relief and oh so very beautiful. “Please tell me what this is because I really don’t want . . . I _can’t_ if you’re not . . .”  
  
His eyes were deeper than Kurt remembered, but they still glistened like pristinely polished amber, their hue dark, the kind that Kurt recognized from all the numerous occasions of heat and proximity.  
  
Even in his doubt, Blaine had unconsciously swayed closer until Kurt could feel his breath upon his own lips, couldn’t quite focus on those eyes.  
  
“I . . .” he murmured when he should have allowed himself to be pulled closer, to close the distance. There was the tentative press of Blaine’s fingertips into his skin, hot and electric. “Blaine. . . .”  
  
He couldn’t remember when he closed his eyes, but he could feel Blaine’s hot exhale over his face, could almost feel the way his chest expanded with the shaky inhale that followed.  
  
“God . . .”  
  
Kurt’s eyes snapped open suddenly, the phantom press of Blaine’s lips millimeters away and before he could lose himself in the moment, in the all-enveloping want of Blaine, he pressed a hand over Blaine’s chest and tried not to let himself get distracted by the pounding of Blaine’s heart, not only Blaine’s life force, but half of his own. “Blaine, wait,” he whispered.  
  
There had been pressure against his palm, the movement of Blaine’s chest closer but it stilled and as soon as it had it was gone and Blaine pulled back, recoiled even, poorly assembled mask hastily put into place and Kurt shook his head, grabbing Blaine’s hand in his own before Blaine could run away again, before Blaine saw in his hesitation precisely that which Kurt didn’t mean.  
  
“No, just . . . I . . . There’s something I have to do,” he continued, unable to strengthen his voice above a whisper. Blaine let out a single breath through his nose, a soundless, disbelieving laugh and he simply shook his head, tongue darting out to lick his lips. Kurt resisted the urge to panic, the returning feeling of being torn asunder and without thinking he brought both of his hands to cup Blaine’s cheeks, turning his face until he had no choice but to look at Kurt, eyes again widening comically but not in a way that made Kurt want to laugh. “Blaine, I’m making my choice. I finally know which one it is, but I . . . I need you to wait for me because I can’t do it like this. I can’t begin this the same way you ended and so I have to go in there and tell him. So, just . . . wait here for me. Please.”  
  
Blaine swallowed, his brows furrowed together until they almost joined in the middle and he sighed, hanging his head briefly before looking up again. “You know I’d wait forever for you.”  
  
“I promise I won’t make you wait that long.”

* * *

  
  
He wasn’t coming back.  
  
Blaine didn’t know how long he’d been sitting on the floor in the foyer of the banquet hall, knees drawn up to his chest, arms wound loosely around them, fingers of his hands intertwined and at them he stared. Every once in a while there would be footsteps on the carpet, footsteps that would still some distance away from him, as though the person making it were hesitating as to whether or not they ought to do something for Blaine, but eventually they awkwardly moved on.  
  
Blaine didn’t look up. He knew Kurt’s footsteps.  
  
He wished he knew where he stood. Whether the wrenching of his heart through song occurred because Kurt was real, because Kurt was choosing to overcome everything that he’d done because the tug of his own heart had been too strong or whether it was truly a final goodbye, a parting of the ways.  
  
He knew what Kurt said but he didn’t dare believe it. Didn’t dare think that Kurt wouldn’t go into that banquet hall and see the man he said he was about to leave and not realize that he was in fact making a mistake.  
  
“Blaine! You’re going to ruin your suit!”  
  
His head jerked up faster than his heart flew out of his chest. Kurt ducked his way through the door of the banquet hall, his eyes red and shining--Blaine realized with a start that he’d been crying--but the smile on his face was so wide it was almost blinding. That happy Kurt smile, the one that crinkled his nose and showed off the tips of his teeth.  
  
“Kurt . . .” he started but Kurt reached him and suddenly he was being propelled backwards until his back hit the wall and without warning Kurt’s lips were against his and it was as though his entire existence had suddenly righted itself. He gasped against Kurt’s lips, the hard press of wall to his back nothing as he melted into the feeling of _home_. The softness of Kurt’s hands cradling his face as the initial rush died down and he simply kissed him sensually, shifting against Blaine so that their noses were no longer smushed between them, so that he could deepen the kiss until Blaine had to clutch at his shoulders to keep his knees from buckling under the pure joy he hadn’t felt since Kurt had first called him during Sectionals.  
  
“I’m glad I waited to do that,” Kurt mumbled against his lips, the smile evident in the breathless tilt of his voice and Blaine couldn’t help but laugh in relief, out of joy, the fluttering in his stomach refusing to die down and his grin growing wider until it hurt to smile in the best possible way.  
  
Because it felt as though reality had finally broken through to the dream world and it turned out that dream wasn’t all that different from reality.  
  
The inhale he drew was difficult, what with the lump of joy in his throat but worth it. He raised a hand to Kurt’s cheek, as though the warmth of his body, the kiss that had left his entire body tingling, wasn’t proof enough of the solidity of the boy in front of him. Kurt sniffed slightly and tilted his head into the action, his eyes flickering shut as Blaine thumbed across the drying tears of his cheek.  
  
“You were crying, are you okay?”  
  
“It was . . . it was just hard, you know?”  
  
Blaine nodded, revelling in the smoothness of Kurt’s skin under his palm. “And this is what you want?”  
  
Kurt snorted and his eyes opened, clear and beautiful and a heavenly mixture of blues, greens, and greys, like a strange, rare gem. “I won’t run if you won’t run, remember?”  
  
Blaine chuckled, leaning his head forward to press their foreheads together. “Is that the newest line in a blockbuster romance? The next, ‘If you’re a bird, I’m a bird?’”  
  
Kurt shook with a burst of laughter against him. “ _Blaine_.”  
  
“The next, ‘You jump, I jump, Jack?’ The next—”  
  
His words were swallowed as Kurt pressed in for another kiss, lips full and chapped and he giggled against him, arms winding around Kurt’s neck to pull him closer.  
  
“You’re so stupid.”  
  
“You already said you’d love me until your dying day, you can’t take it back now.”  
  
The kisses he received were brief, chaste but perfect, peppering Kurt’s words as he spoke with the utmost conviction.  
  
“I’d never take that back.”


End file.
